of the Crown, acting through a Ministry not responsible to the people's
representatives. It would have been difficult to design a plan more
certain to promote friction, racialism, and an eventual deadlock,
necessitating either a humiliating surrender by the Government under
pressure of the refusal of supplies, or a reversion to despotic
government which would have produced another war. With wide differences
of detail and with the added risk of financial deadlock, it was sought
to establish the kind of political situation prevalent in Ireland after
the Act of Union. The executive power in that country, and, with the
exception of the Department of Agriculture, the policy and personnel of
the host of nominated Boards through which its affairs are administered,
still stand wholly outside popular control, while legislation in
accordance with Irish views is only possible when, in the fluctuation of
the British party balance, a British Ministry happens to be in sympathy
with these views, and only too often not even then.

Statesmen who looked with complacency on the history of a century in
Ireland under such a system naturally took a similar view of the
Transvaal, deriving it from the same low estimate of human tendencies.
The literature, despatches, and speeches of the period carry us straight
back to the Canadian controversies of 1837-1840, and beyond them to the
Union controversy of 1800. In one respect the parallel with the Irish
Union is closer, because, while British opinion in Lower Canada was
predominantly against responsible government, there was in Ireland a
strong current of unbribed Protestant opinion against the Union.
Similarly, in the Transvaal, there was a strong feeling among a section
of the British population, coinciding with the general wishes of the
Dutch population, in favour of full responsible government. In other
words, the mere prospect of self-government lessened racial cleavage,
brought men of the two races together, and began the evolution of a new
party cleavage on the normal lines natural to modern communities. The
whole question was keenly canvassed at public meetings and in the Press
from November, 1904, to February 5, 1905, and in Johannesburg a British
party of considerable strength took the lead in demanding the fuller
political rights, and formed the Responsible Government Association. The
controversy was embodied in a Blue-Book laid before Parliament,[35] and
at every stage of its progress the facts were cabled home by Lord Milner
to the Government, who thus had the whole situation before them when
they came to their decision.

It would be worth the reader's while to study with some care the terms
of the despatch announcing that decision.[36] He will feel himself in
contact with fundamental principles, undisturbed by individual bias; for
no one could suspect Mr. Lyttelton, the genial and popular Secretary of
State who penned the despatch, of any violent prejudices. Yet the spirit
of the whole despatch, though gentle and persuasive in its terms, is the
spirit of Fitzgibbon's brutally outspoken argument for the extinction of
the Irish Parliament, and the complete exclusion of Irish Roman
Catholics from influence over their country's affairs. The despatch
begins, it is true, by explaining that the proposed Constitution is only
intended to be temporary; that it had been the invariable custom to
grant freedom to the Colonies by degrees, and that the custom must be
followed; but the reasons adduced for following it, if we consider that
they were adduced in the year 1905, instead of a century and a half
back, constitute one of the strangest of all the strange inversions of
historical cause and effect which a Home Rule controversy has ever
suggested to the human brain. Instead of inferring from our bitter
experiences in Upper and Lower Canada, which are mentioned in the
despatch, and in Ireland, which is not, that race distinctions increase
instead of lessening the necessity for responsible government, Mr.
Lyttelton complacently quotes bi-racial Lower Canada as a precedent for
his Transvaal Constitution. Quite frankly, though in curiously
misleading terms,[37] he records the fact that a similar Constitution
there led to deadlock and rebellion. Without intention to deceive, he
ignores the fact that wholly British Upper Canada reached the same pass
for the same reasons; and he appears to look forward with equanimity to
the passage of the unfortunate Transvaal through an identically painful
phase of history toward the same sanguinary climax. The radical error
in the official version of events in Canada appears in the comparison
between the rebellions of 1837 and the South African War of 1899-1902.
To contrast the "brief armed rising" in Canada with the three years' war
in South Africa, and to argue that a degree of freedom could safely be
given after the former, which would involve great danger after the
latter, was to show ignorance of the chain of historical events and
blindness to their true moral. The underlying idea is the one applied to
the old American Colonies and for centuries to Ireland, namely, that the
more mutinous a dependency is, the less reason for giving it Home Rule,
with the paradoxical corollary applied even to this day in Ireland, that
if it is not disorderly it does not need Home Rule. So from age to age
statesmen run their heads against facts, perpetuate the errors of their
forefathers, and do their unconscious best to intensify the evils they
deplore. It was erroneous to regard either the Canadian Rebellions or
the Boer War as events which rendered responsible government more or
less dangerous. Each of these events was itself the climax of a long
period of irresponsible misgovernment dating from about the same period,
the second decade of the nineteenth century, and demanding the same
remedy. In the Boer case, continuity was twice broken by grants of
independence, and the climax proportionally delayed, but the origin of
the trouble was the same. If the Boers had not trekked _en masse_ from
Cape Colony in order to escape from misgovernment, both movements--in
the Cape and Canada--might have come to a head in exactly the same year,
1837.

In sober, weighty, tactful phrases, carefully chosen to avoid giving
needless offence to the Dutch, the despatch laboriously overthrows the
Liberal theory of government, and works out the negation of all Imperial
experience. It deplores the "bitter memories" of war, which free
institutions, by tending to "emphasize and stereotype the racial line,"
will make more, not less bitter, and which can be effaced only by the
"healing effect of time." We think of the Durham Report, of Ireland, and
marvel. We recollect the bulky Blue-Book at Mr. Lyttelton's elbow as he
wrote, full of speeches and articles by Englishmen, showing quite
correctly, as has since been proved, that the "racial line" in
Johannesburg was growing fainter daily with the mere prospect of
responsible government. These men were not afraid of the Dutch, and said
so. The answer was that they ought to be, or, in the persuasive language
of diplomacy, as follows:

"His Majesty's Government trust that those of British origin in the
Transvaal who, with honest conviction, have advocated the immediate
concession of full responsible government, will recognize the soundness
and cogency of the reasons, both in their own interests and in those of
the Empire, for proceeding more cautiously and slowly, and that under a
political system which admittedly has its difficulties they will,
notwithstanding a temporary disappointment, do their best to promote the
welfare of the country and the smooth working of its institutions."

Then came a chivalrous compliment to the Dutch for their "gallant
struggle" in the war, coupled with a reminder that they are not to be
trusted with political power, a reminder so courteously worded that it,
too, becomes a compliment:

"The inhabitants of Dutch origin have recently witnessed, after their
gallant struggle against superior power, the fall of the Republic
founded by the valour and sufferings of their ancestors, and cannot be
expected, until time has done more to heal the wound, to entertain the
most cordial feelings towards the Government of the Transvaal. But from
them also, as from a people of practical genius, who have learned by
long experience to make the best of circumstances, His Majesty's
Government expect co-operation in the task of making their race, no
longer in isolated independence, a strong pillar in the fabric of a
world-wide Empire. That this should be the result, and that a complete
reconciliation between men of two great and kindred races should, under
the leading of Divine Providence, speedily come to pass, is the ardent
desire of His Majesty the King and of His Majesty's Government."

The tone recalls the tone of Pitt and Castlereagh in proposing the
Union. But Fitzgibbon went more directly to the point in saying outright
that, Ireland having been conquered and confiscated, the colonists "were
at the mercy of the old inhabitants of the island," and that laws must
be framed by an external power to "meet the vicious propensities of
human nature." Let us recognize unreservedly that the words of the
Transvaal despatch were the outcome of deep and sincere conviction. That
is the worst of it. From age to age Ireland has to suffer for the depth
and sincerity of these convictions. There, too, the cleavage of race and
religion, never complete, always defying the official efforts to
"stereotype and emphasize it," to quote the despatch of 1905, grows
fainter with time, and will grow fainter as long as the national
movement lives to draw men together in the common interest of Ireland.
The Volunteers, Wolfe Tone, Emmet, many of the Young Irelanders, Isaac
Butt, Parnell, were Protestants. And there is a strong band of
Protestant Home Rulers to-day in Ulster and out of it, landlords,
tenants, capitalists, labourers, Members of Parliament, and clergymen,
who declare that they are not afraid of Catholic oppression, and who are
told by Unionists that they ought to be. And in Ireland, too, the Roman
Catholic majority are told, rarely, it is true, in the courteous phrases
of Mr. Lyttelton's despatch, that they "cannot be expected to entertain
the most cordial feelings towards the Government." In Ireland, also, is
a "political system which admittedly has its difficulties," ironical
euphemism for a system whose analogue in the Transvaal could have been
used by the subject race, had they so willed, to bring civil government
to a standstill, without the means of furnishing anything better, and
which under the Act of Union can be, and has been, used to dislocate the
Parliamentary life of the United Kingdom. The Boers were asked "as a
people of practical genius" to assist the "smooth working" of an
unworkable Constitution, so as to promote the "reconciliation of two
great and kindred races." The Irish are pursued with invective for
legitimately using the constitutional power given them in order, while
freeing Parliament from an intolerable incubus, to gain the right to
elicit character and responsibility in themselves by shouldering their
own burdens and saving their own souls.

If the official view of the Transvaal was mistaken, the summit of error
was reached in the view taken of the Orange River Colony. In that
Colony, which was almost wholly pastoral and Dutch, and which until the
war had enjoyed free institutions uninterruptedly for half a century,
and had made remarkably good vise of them, representative government,
even of the illusory kind designed for the Transvaal, was to be
indefinitely postponed, postponed at any rate until the results of the
"experiment" in the Transvaal had been observed.

The Government "recognize that there are industrial and economic
conditions peculiar to the Transvaal, which make it very desirable in
that Colony to have at the earliest possible date some better means of
ascertaining the views of the different sections of the population than
the present system affords. The question as regards the Orange River
Colony being a less urgent one, it appears to them that there will be
advantage in allowing a short period to intervene before elective
representative institutions are granted to the last-named Colony,
because this will permit His Majesty's Government to observe the
experiment, and, if need be, to profit by the experience so gained."

What is the train of reasoning in this strange specimen of political
argument? It was important to "ascertain the views" of the bi-racial
Transvaal, but needless to ascertain the views of the practically
homogeneous Orange River Colony. The "question" there is a "less urgent
one." What question? Why less urgent? Is it that the British minority,
being so very small, is more liable to oppression by the Dutch? That is
a tenable point, though by parity of reasoning it would seem to make the
question more, not less, urgent, and the importance of "ascertaining the
views" of the different sections of the population, greater, not less.
Or is it the diametrically opposite train of thought, namely, that an
assumed improbability of disorder owing to the homogeneity of the
population is a reason, not for giving Home Rule, but for withholding
it? These contradictions and confusions are painfully familiar in
anti-Home Rule dialectics all over the world. A quiet Ireland does not
want Home Rule; a turbulent Ireland is not fit for it. If the Unionist
element in Ireland is strong, that is clearly an argument for
withholding Home Rule in deference to the wishes of a strong minority.
If the minority, on the other hand, is proved to be small, all the
greater reason for withholding it, because oppression by the majority
will be easier. So the sterile argument swings back and forth, and men
still talk of "experiments" and "profiting by experience," while the
demonstration of their errors is written in the blood and tears of
centuries, and while masses of facts accumulate, demonstrating the great
truth that free democratic government, whatever its disadvantages and
dangers--and it has both--is the best resource for uniting,
strengthening, and enriching a community of white men.

The Transvaal Constitution of 1905 was cancelled on the incoming of the
Liberal Ministry at the end of that year, and in the following year full
responsible government was granted both to the Transvaal and Orange
River Colony, with the results that we know. Instantaneously there
permeated the bi-racial urban society in the Transvaal a new sense of
brotherhood. Men of different race, as far apart in spirit as the
members of the Kildare Street Club, the Orange Societies, and the
Ancient Order of Hibernians, met and made friends because it was not
only natural but necessary to make friends, since on all alike lay the
burden of doing their best for their country on a basis of equal
citizenship. Nobody out there called the new system an "experiment." The
wrench once over, the thing once done, there was general unanimity that
whatever the difficulties--and there were great difficulties--it was the
right thing to be done under the circumstances, and if this unanimity
was combined, rightly or wrongly, with a good deal of resentment against
the Liberal attitude at home towards Chinese labour, nobody is any the
worse for that. The day will come when even that burning question will
be seen in its true perspective as an infinitesimally small point beside
the great principle of responsible government, which includes the
decision of labour questions, together with all other branches of
domestic policy.

Conservative opinion at home has been slower to change than British
opinion in the Transvaal. But, again, this was natural. Parties had long
been divided on the South African question. The abrupt reversal of
policy was felt as a humiliation, and the ingrained mental habits
engendered by the traditional policy towards Ireland yielded slowly,
grudgingly, and fearfully to the proof of error in South Africa. It is
not for the sake of opening an old wound, but solely because it is
absolutely necessary for the completion of my argument, that I have to
recall the angry and violent speeches which followed the announcement of
the new policy; the dogmatic prognostications of Imperial disruption, of
financial collapse, and of a cruel Boer tyranny in the emancipated
Colonies; the charges of wanton betrayal of loyalists, of disgraceful
surrender to "the enemy." Some of the leading actors in these scenes,
notably Mr. Balfour and Mr. Lyttelton, have since acknowledged that they
were wrong, while apparently feeling it their duty as honourable and
loyal men to give a somewhat misleading turn to an old controversy in
their praise of Lord Milner's services to South Africa. That Lord
Milner, in his administration during and after the war, did, indeed, do
a vast amount of sound and lasting work for South Africa is perfectly
true, and he deserves all honour for it. Probably no public servant of
the Empire ever laboured in its service with more unstinted devotion and
a higher sense of duty. But good administration is not an adequate
substitute for knowledge of men, and that knowledge Lord Milner lacked.
He did no service to the British colonists of South Africa in telling
them that they had been shamefully betrayed by the Home Government in
1906. It would have been wiser to advise them to rely on themselves and
on the justice and wisdom of their Dutch fellow-citizens. His violent
speeches in 1906-1908 about the calamitous results of permitting Dutch
influences free play in South Africa--speeches breathing the essential
spirit of Fitzgibbonism--would have wrought incalculable mischief had
they coincided with effective British policy; while his view, as
expressed in the House of Lords,[38] that a preparatory regime of
benevolent despotism, showing "the obvious solicitude of the Government
for the welfare of the people," and taking shape "in a hundred and one
works of material advancement," would "win us friends and diminish our
enemies," evinces an ignorance of the ordinary motives influencing the
conduct of white men, which would be incredible if we had not Irish
experience before us. "Twenty years of resolute government," said Lord
Salisbury. "Home Rule will be killed by kindness," said many of his
successors. In later chapters I shall have to show what well-meant
kindness and resolute government have done for Ireland. If even at this
late hour Lord Milner would frankly acknowledge his error, I believe he
would enormously enhance his reputation in the eyes of the whole Empire.

As practical men, let us remember that the Constitutions of 1906 would
not have become law if, instead of being issued under Letters Patent,
they had had to pass through Parliament in the form of a Bill. The whole
Conservative party, following Lord Milner, was vehemently against the
Letters Patent. Those who witnessed the debate upon them in the House of
Commons will not forget the scene. I recall this fact without any desire
to entangle myself in the current controversy about the Upper House, but
with the strictly practical object of showing that because a Home Rule
Bill is defeated in Parliament, as the Irish Bills of 1886 and 1893 were
defeated, it does not necessarily follow that its policy is wrong. Nor
does it follow that its policy is wrong if that defeat in Parliament is
confirmed by a General Election. Home Rule for Canada never had to pass,
and would not have passed even the Parliamentary test. Skilful and
determined organization could have wrecked even the Australian
Constitutions. No one, certainly, could have guaranteed a favourable
result of a General Election taken expressly upon the Transvaal and
Orange River Constitutions of 1906, with the whole machinery of one of
the great parties thrown into the scale against them. We know the case
made against Ireland on such occasions, and the case against the
conquered Republics was made in Parliament with ten times greater force.
If anyone doubts this, let him compare the speeches on Ireland in 1886
and 1893 with the speeches on South Africa in 1905-06. With the
alteration of a name or two, with the substitution, for example, of
Johannesburg for Ulster, the speeches against South African and Irish
Home Rule might be almost interchangeable. For electioneering purposes,
evidences, in word and act, of Boer treason, rapacity, and
vindictiveness, could have been made by skilful orators to seem damning
and unanswerable. All the arts for inflaming popular passion under the
pretext of "patriotism" would have been used, and we know that
patriotism sometimes assumes strange disguises. The material would have
been rich and easily accessible. Instead of having to ransack ancient
numbers of Irish or American newspapers for incautious phrases dropped
by Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien in moments of unusual provocation, the
speeches of Botha, Steyn, and De Wet, during the war, and even at the
Peace Conference, would have been ready for the hoardings and the
fly-sheets, and they would have had an appreciable effect.

Am I weakening the case for democracy itself in pressing this view?
Surely not. One democracy is incapable of understanding the domestic
needs and problems of another. Whenever, therefore, a democracy finds
itself responsible for the adjudication of a claim for Home Rule from
white men, it should limit itself to ascertaining whether the claim is
genuine and sincere. If it is, the claim should be granted, and a
Constitution constructed in friendly concert with the men who are to
live under it. That way lies safety and honour, and, happily, the
democracy is being educated to that truth. If this be a counsel of
perfection; if the difficult and delicate task of settling the details
of Irish Home Rule is to be hampered and complicated by the
resuscitation of those time-honoured discussions over abstract
principles which ought long ago to have been buried and forgotten, let
every patriotic and enlightened man at any rate do his best to sweeten
and mollify the controversy, to extirpate its grosser manifestations,
and to substitute reason for passion.

The grant of responsible government to the Transvaal and Orange River
Colony reacted with amazing rapidity on South African politics as a
whole. It took the Canadian Provinces twenty-seven years (if we reckon
from 1840), and the Australian States forty-five years (if we reckon
from 1855), to reach a Federal Union. Hardly a minute was wasted in
South Africa. Under very able guidance, the scheme was canvassed almost
from the first, and in two years trusted leaders of both races,
representing Natal, Cape Colony, and two newly emancipated
Colonies--men, some of whom had been shooting at one another only five
years before--were sitting at a table together hammering out the details
of a South African Union. Here, indeed, was shown the "practical genius"
which the Government of 1905 had piously invoked for their abortive
Constitution. In the spirit of forbearance, of sympathy, of wise
compromise, which governed the proceedings of this famous Conference,
was to be found the measure of the longing of all parties to extinguish
racialism and make South Africa truly a nation. The Imperial Act
legalizing the arrangements ultimately arrived at by the agreement of
the colonists was passed in 1909. The political system constructed
cannot be called Federal. The framers rejected the Australian model, and
went much beyond the Canadian model in centralizing authority and
diminishing local autonomy; nor can there be any doubt that the
strongest motive behind that policy was that of securing the harmony of
the two white races.

All this was the result of trusting the Dutch in 1906. "We cannot expect
you to trust us, and we shall not trust you," said the despatch of 1905.
We know what the consequences of that policy would have been. It is not
a question of imagination or hypothesis. It is a question of the
operation of certain unchanging laws in the conduct of all white men.
Good or bad, our government would have been detested. We should have
manufactured sedition, lawlessness, and discord. Then the tendency would
have been strong to follow the old Irish precedent, and make the evil
symptoms we had ourselves educed the pretext for tightening the screw of
anti-popular government. It would have been said that we must sustain
our prestige to the end and at all costs, a phrase which often cloaks
the obstinacy of moral cowardice. Or, too late to escape the contempt of
the Boers, we might have abruptly surrendered to clamour. It would have
taken a long time to reach union then. Contempt is a bad foundation.

It brings one near despair to see the Union of South Africa used by men
who should know better as an argument against Irish Home Rule. The chain
of causation is so clear, one would think, as to be incapable of
misconstruction. But there seems to be no limit in certain minds to the
prejudice against the principle of Home Rule. If it is seen to work
well, the phenomenon is hurriedly swept into oblivion, and its results
attributed with feverish ingenuity to any cause but the true one. The
very speed with which the antidote pervades the body politic and expels
the old poison helps these untiring propagators of error to suppress the
history of recuperation, and to ascribe the cure of the patient to a
treatment which, if applied long enough, would have killed him. The
Conservative party appear to have now reached this amazing conclusion:
that they and Lord Milner were the authors of the South African Union,
and that that Union is a weapon sent them by Providence for combating
the Irish claims. This is what Ireland has to pay for being the sport of
British parties. Individual statesmen may point at past mistakes; but a
party, as a party, can never admit error: it is against the rules. To
make things easier, there is that question-begging phrase, the "Union."
If South Africa, like Australia, had been federalized, this windfall
would have been lost, because the word "Federal" might have suggested
some form of Federal Home Rule for Ireland. Labels mean an enormous
amount in politics.

There is not the slightest doubt that Mr. Walter Long, and even Lord
Selborne, who, as High Commissioner, actually witnessed the whole
evolution from responsible government in the two conquered States to the
Union of South Africa, are perfectly sincere in their opposition to
Irish Home Rule. But, I would respectfully suggest, it is their duty to
use their knowledge and convictions in the right and fair way. Let them
say, if they will, ignoring the intermediate and indispensable phase of
Home Rule in South Africa: "Here are two Unions; never mind how they
arose. Both are good: all Unions are good. The modern tendency to unify
is sound; do not let us react to devolution." Let them, in other words,
confine their argument to the domain of political science. What, I
submit, they should refrain from, is the imputation of sordid motives to
Nationalist leaders, the prognostications of religious and racial
tyranny in Ireland, and all those inflammatory arguments against the
principle of Home Rule which have been used all the world over, from
time immemorial, for the maintenance of Unions based on legal, not on
moral, ties, which were used against responsible government for the
Transvaal, and which, I venture to affirm, degrade our public life.

I am assuming for the moment that most Conservatives will elect to use
the South African parallel in the way that Mr. Long and Lord Selborne
have used it, that is, while tacitly approving in retrospect of the Home
Rule of 1906, to argue from Union to Union. But it is of no use to blink
the fact that there are pessimists who will put forward an antithetical
case, boldly declaring that we were wrong ever to trust the Boers, that
racialism is as bad as ever, that General Botha's loyalty is cant, the
Cullinan diamond an insult, and that South Africa will go from bad to
worse under a Dutch tyranny. Party propaganda is quite elastic enough to
permit the two opposite views to be used to convince the same electorate
at the same election. Pessimists are always active in these affairs, and
they can always produce something in the nature of a plausible case,
because it stands to reason that the evils of generations cannot be
swept away in a moment, either in South Africa or Ireland. Miracles do
not happen, and the pessimists, who are the curse of Ireland to-day,
will be able to demonstrate with ease that the free Ireland of to-morrow
will not enter instantaneously upon a millennium. It is useless to
attempt to convert these extremists. For a century back, Hansard and the
columns of daily papers have been full of their unfulfilled jeremiads
about Canada, about Australia, and about the very smallest and most
tardy attempts to give a little responsibility to the majority of
citizens in Ireland. The vocabulary of impending ruin has been exhausted
long ago; there is nothing new to be said. But those who care to study
in a cool temper the course of recent South African politics in the
columns of the _Times_, or, better still, in those of that excellent
magazine for the discussion of Imperial affairs, the _Round Table_, will
conclude that extraordinary progress has been made towards racial
reunion, and that in this respect no serious peril threatens South
Africa. The settlement, by friendly compromise at the end of the last
session, of the very thorny question of language in the education of
children, is a good example of what good-will can accomplish under free
institutions. By a laboured construction of fragments of speeches culled
from the utterances of exceptionally vehement partisans, it would be
still possible to make up a theory of the "disloyalty" of the South
African Dutch. It would have been equally possible for a painstaking
British student of the _Sydney Bulletin_ within recent memory to start a
panic over the imminent "loss" of Australia. Some people think that
Canada is as good as "lost" now. Yet the Empire has never been so strong
or so united as to-day.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] Cd. 2479, 1905.

[36] Cd. 2400, 1905.

[37] "It is true that in the case of Canada full responsible government
was conceded, a few years after a troublous period culminating in a
brief armed rising, to a population composed of races then not very
friendly to each other, though now long since happily reconciled. But
the Canadas had by that time enjoyed representative institutions for
over fifty years, the French-Canadians had since the year 1763 been
continuously British subjects, and the disorders which preceded Lord
Durham's Mission and the subsequent grant of self-government could not
compare in any way with a war like that of 1899-1902. It is also the
fact that in the United Colony of Upper and Lower Canada, during the
period of 1840-1867, parties were formed mainly upon the lines of races,
and that, as the representatives of the races were in number nearly
balanced, stability of Government was not attained, a difficulty which
was not overcome until the Federation of 1867, accompanied by the
relegation of provincial affairs to provincial Legislatures, placed the
whole political Constitution of Canada upon a wider basis."

Few would gather from the first sentence that the races were "not very
friendly to each other" precisely because they lived under a coercive
political system; and that, in the long-run, they were "happily
reconciled" because they received responsible government. Nor could it
be deduced from the obscure reference lower down to the union of the two
Provinces that the Union was the one blot upon Durham's scheme, the one
point in which, fearing the predominance of a French majority in Lower
Canada, he shrank from his own principles and recommended an unworkable
Union which tended to encourage the formation "of parties on the lines
of races." From the further allusion to the Federal Union of 1867, no
one would imagine that that great scheme was founded on a cessation of
racial antipathy inside the Quebec Province, and on a voluntary
recognition among all races and parties that it was best for that
Province to have a local autonomy of its own, parallel with that of the
Ontario Province and under the supreme central authority of the
Dominion.

[38] February 26, March 27, 1906.




CHAPTER VIII

THE ANALOGY


Let the reader endeavour to see the closely related stories of Ireland
and of these more distant communities as a whole, undistracted by the
varying degrees of their proximity to the Mother Country, making his
study one of men and laws, and remembering that Ireland was the first
and nearest of the British Colonies. Does not she become a convex
mirror, in which, swollen to unnatural proportions, the mistakes of two
centuries are reflected? Principles of government universal in their
nature, transcending geography, and painfully evolved in more distant
parts of the Empire, we have thrown to the winds in Ireland. Economic
evils, resembling, in however distant a degree, those of Ireland, have
irritated and retarded every community in which they have been allowed
to take root. A sound agrarian system has been the primary need of every
country. To take the closest parallel, if absentee proprietorship and
insecurity of tenure kept little Prince Edward Island, peacefully and
legally settled, backward and disturbed for a century, it is not
surprising that Ireland, submitted to confiscation, the Penal Code, and
commercial rum, did not flourish under a land system beside which that
of Prince Edward Island was a paradise. Tardy redress of the worst Irish
abuses is no defence of the system which created them and sustained them
with such ruinous results. No white community of pride and spirit would
willingly tolerate the grotesque form of Crown Colony administration,
founded on force, and now tempered by a kind of paternal State
Socialism, under which Ireland lives to-day. Unionism for Ireland is
anti-Imperialist. Its upholders strenuously opposed colonial autonomy,
and but yesterday were passionately opposing South African autonomy.
To-day colonial autonomy is an axiom. But Ireland is a measure of the
depth of these convictions. There would be no Empire to idealize if
their Irish principles had been applied just a little longer to any of
the oversea States which constitute the self-governing Colonies of
to-day. As it is, these principles have wrought great and perhaps
lasting mischief which, in the righteous glow of self-congratulation
upon what we are accustomed to call our constructive political genius,
we are too apt to overlook. It was bad for America to pass through that
phase of agitation and discord which preceded the revolutionary war. It
was demoralizing for the Canadas to be driven into rebellion by the
vices of ascendancy government. Mr. Gladstone, speaking of Australian
autonomy, was right in satirizing the "miserable jargon" about fitting
men for political privileges, and in demonstrating the harm done by
withholding those privileges. And the Irish race all over the world,
fine race as it is, would be finer still if Ireland had been free.

The political habits formed in dealing with Ireland have disastrously
influenced Imperial policy in the past. Cannot we, by a supreme national
effort, reverse the mental process, and, if we have always failed in the
past to learn from Irish lessons how not to treat the Colonies, at any
rate learn, even at the eleventh hour, from our colonial lessons how to
treat Ireland? Must we for ever sound the old alarms about "disloyalty"
and "dismemberment" and "abandonment of the loyal minority to the tender
mercies of their foes"; phrases as old as the Stamp Act of 1765? Must we
carry the "gentle art of making enemies," practised to the last point of
danger in the Colonies, to the preposterous pitch of estranging men at
our very doors, while pluming ourselves on the friendship of peoples
12,000 miles away? These are anxious times. We have a mighty rival in
Europe, and we need the co-operation of all our hands and brains. On a
basis of mere profit and loss, is it sensible to maintain a system in
Ireland which weakens both Ireland and the whole United Kingdom, clogs
the delicate machinery of Parliamentary government, and, worked out in
hard figures of pounds, shillings, and pence, has ceased even to show a
pecuniary advantage?

Have Unionists really no better prescription for the constitutional
difficulties caused by the Union than to reduce the representation of
Ireland in Parliament so as to give Ireland still less control than at
present over her own affairs? Is that seriously their last word in
statesmanship, to exasperate Nationalist Ireland without even providing
in any appreciable degree a mechanical remedy for disordered political
functions? The idea has only to be stated to be dismissed. It is not
even practical politics. Some things are sheer impossibilities; and to
leave the Union system as it is, while reducing representation, is one
of them.

We revert, then, to a contemplation of the well-tried expedient, "Trust,
and you will be trusted." But then we have to meet pessimists of two
descriptions, the honest and the merely cynical. The honest pessimist
(often, unhappily, an educated Irishman) says: "The Irish in Ireland are
an incurably criminal race. They differ from Irishmen elsewhere and from
Anglo-Saxons everywhere. Air and soil are unaccountable. The Union
policy has been, and remains, a painful but a quite inevitable
necessity. It is sound, now and for all time." The cynical pessimist, on
the other hand, admits the errors of past policy, but says frankly that
it is too late to change. "We have gone too far, raised passions we
cannot allay." I shall not try further to confute the honest pessimist.
The preceding chapters have been written in vain if they do not shatter
the theory of original sin. And to the cynical pessimist, who is a
reincarnation of our old friend Fitzgibbon (for that clear-headed
statesman frankly imputed original sin to the conquerors of Ireland, as
well as to the conquered), I would only say: "Use your common sense."
These panics over the vagaries and excesses of an Irish Parliament,
always groundless, are beginning to look highly ridiculous. In 1893,
when the last Home Rule Bill was being discussed, a Franco-Irish
alliance was the fear. Now it is the other way, and the _Spectator_ has
been writing solemn articles to warn its readers that Mr. Dillon, in a
speech on foreign policy, has shown ominous signs of hostility to
France. In the election of January, 1910, an ex-Cabinet Minister
informed the public that Home Rule meant the presence of a German fleet
in Belfast Lough--at whose invitation he did not explain, though he
probably did not intend to insult Ulster. This wild talk has not even
the merit of a strategical foundation. It belongs to another age.
Ireland has neither a fleet nor the will or money to build one. Our
fleet, in which large numbers of Irishmen serve, guarantees the security
of New Zealand, and if it cannot maintain the command of home waters,
including St. George's Channel, our situation is desperate, whether
Ireland is friendly or hostile. We guarantee the independent existence
of the kingdom of Belgium, which is as near as Ireland, with military
liabilities vastly more serious than any which Ireland could conceivably
entail; but we do not claim, as a consequence, to control the Executive
of Belgium and remove her Parliament to Westminster, in order to be
quite sure that the Belgians are not intriguing against us with Germany.
Germany, our alarmists fear, is to invade Ireland, and Ireland is to
greet the invaders with open arms. The same prophecy was being made not
more than three years ago of the South African Dutch. After asking for a
century and a half to manage her own affairs, the Irish are not likely
to ask to be ruled by Germans. The German strategists are men of common
sense. If they were fortunate enough to gain the command of the sea,
they could make no worse mistake than to dissipate their energies on
Ireland.

Perhaps it is a waste of time to attempt to destroy these foolish myths.
Let those that are sceptical about the effect of Home Rule in producing
friendlier feelings between Ireland and Great Britain consider in a
reasonable spirit the commonplace question of mutual interests. What is
the really practical significance of Ireland's proximity to England?
This, that their material interests are indissociably intertwined. If it
is "safe," as the phrase goes, to entrust Australia with Home Rule,
surely it is safer still to entrust Ireland with it. Has Ireland
anything to gain by separation? Clearly nothing. Has she anything to
lose? Much. Most of her trade is with Great Britain. British credit is
of enormous value to her. The Imperial forces are of less proportionate
value to her because her external trade is small; but she willingly
supplies a large and important part of their personnel; she shares in
their glorious traditions; and if it is a case of protection for her
trade, she will get no protection elsewhere.

How idle are these calculations of profit and loss! The truth is that
Ireland has taken her full share in winning and populating the Empire.
The result is hers as much as Britain's. Mr. Redmond spoke for his
countrymen last May[39] in saying: "We, as Irishmen, are not prepared to
surrender our share in the heritage [that is, the British Empire] which
our fathers created." That is sound sentiment and sound sense. It is the
view taken by the Colonies, where Irishmen are known, respected, and
understood, and where the support for Home Rule, based on personal
experience of its blessings, has been, and remains, consistent and
strong. Indeed, we miss the significance of that support if we do not
realize that Irish Home Rule is an indispensable preliminary to the
closer union of the various parts of the Empire. Let us add the wider
generalization that it is an indispensable preliminary to the closer
union of all the English-speaking races. It may be fairly computed that
a fifth of the present white population of the United States is of Irish
blood.[40] American opinion, as a whole, so far as it is directed
towards Ireland and away from a host of absorbing domestic problems, is
favourable to Home Rule. Irish-American opinion has never swerved,
although it has become more sober, as the material condition of Ireland
has improved, and the interests of Irish-Americans themselves have
become more closely identified with those of their adopted country.
Fenianism is altogether extinct. The extreme claim for the total
separation of Ireland from Great Britain is now no more than a
sentimental survival among a handful of the older men, of the fierce
hatreds provoked by the miseries and horrors of an era which has passed
away.[41] Even Mr. Patrick Ford and the _Irish World_ have moderated
their tone, and where that tone is still inflammatory it is not
representative of Irish-American opinion. I have studied with a good
deal of care the columns of that journal for some months back, smiling
over the imaginary terrors of the nervous people on this side of the
Atlantic who are taught by their party Press to believe that Mr. Patrick
Ford is going to dynamite them in their beds. Any liberal-minded student
of history and human nature would pronounce the whole propaganda
perfectly harmless. But the sane instinct that Ireland should have a
local autonomy of her own, an instinct common to the whole brotherhood
of nations which have sprung from these shores, lasts undiminished and
takes shape, quite rightly and naturally, as it takes shape in the
Colonies, in financial support of the Nationalist party in Ireland.
Anti-British sentiment in the United States, once a grave international
danger, is that no longer; but it does still represent an obstacle to
the complete realization of an ideal which all patriotic men should aim
at: the formation of indestructible bonds of friendship between Great
Britain and the United States. Nor must it be forgotten that the calm
and reasonable character of Irish-American opinion is due in a large
degree to confidence in the ultimate success of the constitutional
movement here for Home Rule. Every successive defeat of that policy
tends to embitter feeling in America.

Oh, for an hour of intelligent politics! The old choice is before us--to
make the best or the worst of the state of opinion in America; to
disinter from ancient files of the _Irish World_ sentences calculated to
inflame an ignorant British audience; or to say in sensible and manly
terms: "The situation is more favourable than it has been for a century
past for the settlement of just Irish claims."

FOOTNOTES:

[39] At Woodford, May 27, 1911.

[40] This is a very general statement. No figures exist for an accurate
computation. The Census of 1910 gives the total population of the United
States, white and coloured, as 91,272,266, of whom nearly 9,000,000 are
negroes. The figures about countries of origin are not yet available.
The statistical abstract of the United States (1908) gives the total
number of immigrants from Ireland from 1821 to 1908 as 4,168,747 (the
large majority of whom must have been of marriageable age), but does not
estimate the subsequent increase by marriage, and takes no account of
the immigration prior to 1821, which was very large, especially in the
period preceding the Revolutionary War of 1775-1782. At the Census of
1900 Irishmen actually _born in Ireland_ and then resident in the United
States are stated to have been 1,618,567, as compared with 93,682 from
Wales, 233,977 from Scotland, and 842,078 from England.

[41] I am especially indebted for information to Mr. Hugh Sutherland, of
the _North American_ (Philadelphia), to Mr. Rodman Wanamaker, of the
same city, to Mr. Frank Sanborn, of Concord, and to Mr. John
O'Callaghan, of Boston.




CHAPTER IX

IRELAND TO-DAY


Why does present-day Ireland need Home Rule? I put the question in that
way because I am not going to question the fact that she wants Home
Rule. She has always said she wanted it: she says so still, and that is
enough. There is a powerful minority in Ireland against Home Rule. There
always have been minorities more or less powerful against Home Rule in
all ages and places. That does not alter the national character of the
claim. If once we go behind the voice of a people, constitutionally
expressed, we court endless risks. National leaders have always been
called "agitators," which, of course, they are, and non-representative
agitators, which they are not. To deny the genuineness of a claim which
is feared is an invariable feature of oppositions to measures of Home
Rule. The denial is generally irreconcilable with the case made for the
dangers of Home Rule, and that contradiction in its most glaring shape
characterizes the present opposition to the Irish claims. But Unionists
should elect to stand on one ground or the other, and for my part I
shall assume that the large majority of Irishmen, as shown by successive
electoral votes, want Home Rule. Precisely what form of Home Rule they
want is another and by no means so clear a matter, on which I shall
presently have a word to say. But they want, in the general sense, to
manage their own local affairs. Her best friends would despair of
Ireland if that was not her desire.